


Foreboding

by kittydesade



Category: Darkover series - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:53:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dyan's rejection from the Tower is not without merit, not that he would ever admit that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foreboding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyoneill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/gifts).



> Rated mature for extreme rage and almost drunken sex. Although no archive warnings apply, the standard warning of "Dyan Ardais is very intense and also a bastard" should apply.

"You are not suited for Tower training."

Dyan remembered little of his journey from the Tower. Little of the facts, at least, the temperament of his horse or the state of the road, the condition of the rooms he had stayed in at the Tower. The food he ate along the way. What he remembered most was the anger, like molten oil, churning through him and spitting sharply at anyone who so much as looked at him. 

Not suited. Not _suited_ , they said. Not a good fit for the Tower because of his mood, because of his hot blood, the sadly lacking capacity for laran, not suited because he was not titled enough, not handsome enough, not wealthy enough to pay them, desperate, anything. He was not enough, was the chief point they had made. There was a part of him that was missing, hollowed out and the place where it might grow deadened. The idiot Aldaran bint had shivered from him when he passed her in the hall on his way to be tried. The Ridenow _laranzu_ who bid him goodbye had a pitying expression on his face. As though Dyan wanted any of his pity. 

One more day's ride back home. He would take it as slow as he could, to delay the inevitable explanations and shame. 

Dyan kicked his feet out of the stirrups and slid off his mount, jarring himself with the landing from heels to head. His horse jerked; he jerked back on the reins harder than he should have. "No, I'm sorry, girl," he muttered, apologizing with a scratch under the horse's mane. "It's not your fault." It wasn't the dumb beast's fault and he'd ridden her into a lather the whole way back. 

Perhaps that was why he was unsuitable. Thinking of nothing but himself. "If that were the case, they should look to themselves before they throw accusations at me," he muttered, heading into the inn for a bed and a meal. Not that he had to, but he wanted to be left alone tonight. He wanted to be fed, warm, and dry, and he wanted to be left alone by anyone who knew who he was or what he was expected to be or do. He'd had enough expectations, from without and within, to last him three entire lifetimes.

"There's your stew," a woman tending the large pot by the fire dished him out a bowl of something that smelled over-spiced, the innkeeper's wife, he assumed. "Bread's over by the bar."

"My thanks, _damisela_ ," he gave a short bow to her barked laugh and went and collected the rest of his supper. 

Food and drink settled him somewhat. His face still felt hot, but his inclinations to do violence had eased, which, he mused, was good for a potential _laranzu_ the Tower deemed too dangerous to have in their midst. And no one looked at him, so he could sit in a darkened corner in the manner of unsavory persons everywhere and look like a highway bandit with his hood pulled over his face. 

What a ridiculous image. Dyan laughed to himself, at himself. He must be acting like the worst kind of tragic brooding hero from some young girl's book right now. A good thing no one was around to see him. 

"Something amusing?" 

Dyan sat up. He'd been joined by another young man, this one barely more than a boy, and at least attempting to be as angry as Dyan had felt earlier that day. Handsome, for all the scowling he was doing. "Only myself," he shrugged. "It's hard to maintain a temper when you're not face to face with the source of your rage and not look foolish." 

The young man either ignored him or was too stupid to realize Dyan included the both of them in that statement. "There's nothing foolish about a dangerous temper," he asserted. He even thumped the table to prove it. No one looked around.

"That depends on the person with the temper." Dyan leaned forward. "You seem to be, if you don't mind my saying so, in a temper, yourself. Should I ask or should I leave you to threaten the innkeeper's tables and crockery?" 

Now he did catch the implied insult, and turned even more red. "I'm... I didn't..." he sputtered. "You can't..." 

"Talk to you that way? Why? Are you someone important who'll have me dragged off and tortured if I insult you?" He signaled to the innkeeper for more wine. "You look ridiculous, and your impotent little show of fury is to blame. Whatever the object of your rage, he or she isn't here," he gestured around, making the reasonable guess because no one was taking any notice of the boy at all. "And more than likely you came here hoping to make a public show of whatever grievances you have so that someone would tell you that you were right to be angry, and that you didn't have your head up your..." The innkeeper's wife interrupted him with her delivery of two cups and a full skin of wine.

The boy grabbed one of the cups and drained it without tasting the wine. Which wasn't the worst idea, and Dyan did the same, more for the taste than out of pique. 

"Now," he added, since the boy didn't seem to know how to leave without losing face. "You can drink some wine, eat some food, at my expense, or you can go find another place to rant and rave, because you're certainly not going to find the audience you want here."

"Who says I want an audience," the boy muttered. Dyan didn't bother to answer that, refilling both their cups instead in a wordless invitation for the boy to talk more. It was, at least, diverting him from his own fury. 

The story was boring in its simplicity, a tale of love spurned, and told in great length and repetition until Dyan had to stop the young man with a hand over his mouth. Which was far less subtlety than he'd intended. By now the boy, whose name as it turned out was Marius, was well and truly in his cups and took it for an invitation to fall all over Dyan. Who sighed, and half-carried him through the common room to the stairs. At least the inn had emptied over the course of the night, and there was no one left but the boarders and the innkeeper at the bar. 

He was attempting to maneuver his bags, his boy, and his door when she reached him, brushing against the surface of his mind with more of a caress than he could stand. Dyan shoved her and the boy rudely away. _Get out. You're not welcome here._

_That boy won't provide you with much for the evening._ The voice sounded familiar. Felt familiar. The Aldaran whose name he couldn't remember, backed with the power of a full circle. 

He pulled the door shut behind him. _That's no concern of yours._ His voice echoed hollowly inside his own head compared to her ringing choral voice. Just one more insult to add to the list.

_Not tonight. But tomorrow it might be. Or the next day. Or the following season. Dyan, please think about what you're doing. Just because you were not allowed to join the Tower doesn't mean..._

He heard the Ridenow shout in the background, somewhere, and fall away; the Aldaran's mind faded sharply as a result. All to the good. He hadn't wanted them in his head anyway, and from that first burst of rage and rejection he fed it along with resentment after resentment. Every insult he'd been paid not just by the Tower, but by the Comyn as well. By anyone. He couldn't be anyone's choice, he'd been second-rate to a stupid sheepherder boy. _Doesn't mean what? That my life can't find_ meaning? _That I don't have purpose, or place somewhere? Save your breath and save your assurances, I don't need them anymore._

It wasn't the Aldaran's mind who touched his next, but the Keeper's. Even he knew better than to continue ranting, then. _You are an angry young man, Dyan Ardais. The Tower cannot support anger like yours, no one could hold a matrix with you, and the circle would fracture. You know this as well as we do, and you still blame us for your failure. Your choices, your inability to adapt to rejection will hinder you for as long as you let them. You are a man of great passion, Dyan, but you let it run out of control, and you feed the darker aspects of yourself._

Against his will, he felt his temper ebbing. Replaced by weariness, almost enough to lie down with Marius on the floor and go to sleep right there. 

_You could have helped me. You chose to turn me away._

_That is your doing, not ours._ The Keeper withdrew, leaving Dyan abruptly alone within the cold confines of his skull. And the room, now devoid even of the hope of a good rough tumble before sleep, with Marius passed out already. Dyan sat down with his back to the bed, closed his eyes and dropped his head to his folded hands. He wanted to weep, but there was nothing left in him for that.


End file.
